Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

The Used and Rental copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

Summary

This work presents the Nicomachean Ethics in a fresh English translation by Christopher Rowe that strives to be meticulously accurate yet also accessible. The translation is accompanied by Sarah Broadie's detailed line-by-line commentary, which brings out the subtlety of Aristotle's thought asit develops from moment to moment. In addition, a substantial introductory section features a thorough examination of the text's main themes and interpretative problems and also provides preambles to each of the ten books of the Nicomachean Ethics. An indispensable resource for students approachingthe Nicomachean Ethics for the first time, this detailed treatment is ideal for courses in classical or ancient philosophy, the philosophy of Aristotle, and ethics.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

V

(19)

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

xxiv

(1)

NOTE ON THE REVISION

xxv

BOOK I. THE GOOD FOR MAN

1

(27)

Subject of our inquiry

1

(1)

1. All human activities aim at some good: some goods subordinate to others.

2. The science of the good for man is politics.

Nature of the science

2

(2)

3. We must not expect more precision than the subjectmatter admits of. The student should have reached years of discretion.

What is the good for man?

4

(20)

4. It is generally agreed to be happiness, but there are various views as to what happiness is. What is required at the start is an unreasoned conviction about the facts, such as is produced by a good upbringing.

5. Discussion of the popular views that the good is pleasure, honour, wealth; a fourth kind of life, that of contemplation, deferred for future discussion.

6. Discussion of the philosophical view that there is an Idea of good.

7. The good must be something final and self-sufficient. Definition of happiness reached by considering the characteristic function of man.

8. Our definition is confirmed by current beliefs about happiness.

9. Is happiness acquired by learning or habituation, or sent by God or by chance?

10. Should no man be called happy while he lives?

11. Do the fortunes of the living affect the dead?

12. Virtue is praiseworthy, but happiness is above praise.

Kinds of virtue

24

(4)

13. Division of the faculties, and resultant division of virtue into intellectual and moral.

BOOK II. MORAL VIRTUE

28

(20)

Moral virtue, how produced, in what medium and in what manner exhibited

28

(7)

1. It, like the arts, is acquired by repetition of the corresponding acts.

2. These acts cannot be prescribed exactly, but must avoid excess and defect.

3. Pleasure in doing virtuous acts is a sign that the virtuous disposition has been acquired: a variety of considerations show the essential connexion of moral virtue with pleasure and pain.

4. The actions that produce moral virtue are not good in the same sense as those that flow from it: the latter must fulfil certain conditions not necessary in the case of the arts.

Definition of moral virtue

35

(8)

5. Its genus: it is a state of character, not a passion, nor a faculty.

6. Its differentia: it is a disposition to choose the mean.

7. This proposition illustrated by reference to the particular virtues.

Characteristics of the extreme and mean states: practical corollaries

43

(5)

8. The extremes are opposed to each other and to the mean.

9. The mean is hard to attain, and is grasped by perception, not by reasoning.

BOOK III. MORAL VIRTUE (cont.)

48

(31)

Inner side of moral virtue: conditions of responsibility for action

48

(15)

1. Praise and blame attach to voluntary actions, i.e. actions done (1) not under compulsion, and (2) with knowledge of the circumstances.

2. Moral virtue implies that the action is done (3) by choice: the object of choice is the result of previous deliberation.

3. The nature of deliberation and its objects: choice is deliberate desire of things in our own power.

4. The object of rational wish is the end, i.e. the good or the apparent good.

5. We are responsible for bad as well as for good actions.

Courage

63

(9)

6. Courage concerned with the feelings of fear and confidence-strictly speaking, with the fear of death in battle.

7. The motive of courage is the sense of honour: characteristics of the opposite vices, cowardice and rashness.

8. Five kinds of courage improperly so called.

9. Relation of courage to pain and pleasure.

Temperance

72

(7)

10. Temperance is limited to certain pleasures of touch.

11. Characteristics of temperance and its opposites, self-indulgence and `insensibility'.

12. Self-indulgence more voluntary than cowardice: comparison of the self-indulgent man to the spoilt child.

BOOK IV. MORAL VIRTUE (cont.)

79

(27)

Virtues concerned with money

79

(10)

1. Liberality.

2. Magnificence.

Virtues concerned with honour

89

(7)

3. Pride.

4. The virtue intermediate between ambition and unambitiousness.

The virtue concerned with anger

96

(2)

5. Good temper.

Virtues of social intercourse

98

(6)

6. Friendliness.

7. Truthfulness.

8. Ready wit.

A quasi-virtue

104

(2)

9. Shame.

BOOK V. MORAL VIRTUE (cont.)

106

(31)

Justice: Its sphere and outer nature: in what sense it is a mean

106

(19)

1. The just as the lawful (universal justice) and the just as the fair and equal (particular justice): the former considered.

2. The latter considered: divided into distributive and rectificatory justice.

9. Can a man be voluntarily treated unjustly? Is it the distributor or the recipient that is guilty of injustice in distribution? Justice not so easy as it might seem, because it is not a way of acting but an inner disposition.

10. Equity, a corrective of legal justice.

11. Can a man treat himself unjustly?

BOOK VI. INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE

137

(22)

Introduction

137

(3)

1. Reasons for studying intellectual virtue: intellect divided into the contemplative and the calculative.

2. The object of the former is truth, that of the latter truth corresponding with right desire.

The chief intellectual virtues

140

(9)

3. Science-demonstrative knowledge of the necessary and eternal.

4. Art-knowledge of how to make things.

5. Practical wisdom-knowledge of how to secure the ends of human life.

6. Intuitive reason-knowledge of the principles from which science proceeds.

11. Judgement-right discrimination of the equitable: the place of intuition in morals.

Relation of philosophic to practical wisdom

154

(5)

12. What is the use of philosophic and of practical wisdom? Philosophic wisdom is the formal cause of happiness; practical wisdom is what ensures the taking of proper means to the proper ends desired by moral virtue.

13. Relation of practical wisdom to natural virtue, moral virtue, and the right rule.

BOOK VII. CONTINENCE AND INCONTINENCE: PLEASURE

159

(33)

Continence and incontinence

159

(24)

1. Six varieties of character: method of treatment: current opinions.

2. Contradictions involved in these opinions.

3. Solution of the problem, how the incontinent man's knowledge is impaired.

4. Solution of the problem, what is the sphere of incontinence: its proper and its extended sense distinguished.

5. Incontinence in its extended sense includes a brutish and a morbid form.

6. Incontinence in respect of anger is less disgraceful than incontinence proper.

7. Softness and endurance: two forms of incontinence-weakness and impetuosity.